English

MatGPTQ: Accurate and Efficient Post-Training Matryoshka Quantization

Machine Learning 2026-02-04 v1

Abstract

Matryoshka Quantization (MatQuant) is a recent quantization approach showing that a single integer-quantized model can be served across multiple precisions, by slicing the most significant bits (MSB) at inference time. This enables a single checkpoint to cover a wide range of memory and latency budgets, but renders quantization much more challenging. In particular, the initial MatQuant relies on expensive quantization-aware training (QAT) variants, rather than fast one-shot post training quantization (PTQ), and lacks open-source and kernel support. We address all of these limitations by introducing Post-Training Matryoshka Quantization (MatGPTQ), a new PTQ pipeline that produces a single parent model jointly optimized for multiple target precisions in one-shot, based on a small calibration set. MatGPTQ casts Matryoshka quantization as a multi-precision objective with bit-slicing and cross-bit error compensation, resulting in an algorithm that produces a multi-bit-width, "sliceable" model in a single pass. We also incorporate a new budget-aware search for heterogeneous per-layer bit-witdhs and provide efficient kernels that implement slicing and mixed-precision execution. Across standard LLMs and benchmarks, MatGPTQ preserves high-bit accuracy while substantially improving performance at low-bit-witdh settings. Overall, we establish a new state of the art for Matryoshka-style post-training quantization and make single-checkpoint, multi-precision deployment open and practical. Code is available at https://github.com/IST-DASLab/MatGPTQ.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.03537,
  title  = {MatGPTQ: Accurate and Efficient Post-Training Matryoshka Quantization},
  author = {Maximilian Kleinegger and Elvir Crnčević and Dan Alistarh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.03537},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Preprint

R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:34:11.429Z